Hobbit pub’s legal problems continue

The landlady of  The Hobbit pub in Portswood is raising money to help pay legal fees as wrangling over the small print of a deal made over copyright with Hollywood’s Saul Zaentz Company (SZC) continues.

Pub landlady Stella Roberts said she could not discuss the negotiations as she had signed a confidentiality agreement but said “We are very frustrated. We’re living in limbo here. We just want the whole thing finished. We just don’t know what to do. We’ve been advised to carry on trading as we were, because we haven’t got a lot of choice.”

A letter from SZC in March had asked the pub to remove all JRR Tolkien branding. The company later agreed to license Tolkien brands in order to resolve the dispute over the pub’s name.

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